Publication Type: Individual Presentation
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Primarily concerned with interrogating shifts within the social purposes of higher education for black female students at Fisk University, this paper positions the Fisk student strike as a central cause of both the redefinition of coeducation and the definition of the women’s sphere at Fisk between 1924-1940. Through a gendered analysis, this paper argues that black male and female students organized the Fisk student strike of 1924-1925 in order to protest the restrictive rules and policies that shaped coeducation at Fisk. As a result, Fisk students articulated a philosophy of coeducation that called for greater student autonomy and increased extracurricular activities on the Fisk campus. For black women students, while the Fisk student strike resulted in the development of more social activities and greater autonomy, Fisk administrators developed and policed a defined women’s sphere at Fisk for the higher education of black women students.

The source materials for this paper include Fisk University manuscripts (presidential papers, faculty and staff papers, college catalogs, student discipline records) and student life publications (yearbooks, newspapers, etc.)

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: When American Protestant missionaries established the Syrian Protestant College (SPC) in 1866, they proclaimed that one of their primary goals was to develop a productive and moral character among the students. As Daniel Bliss, the first president, said, “No block of marble was brought to us to be worked upon, but living boys and living men came to us from the East, from the West, from the North and from the South, to be influenced for good. They were all human and consequently imperfect; they were all human and consequently capable of perfection.” Even as the school secularized and became the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1920, the mantra that “AUB Makes Men” remained central to the project the Americans felt they were undertaking.

In my paper, I propose to examine the question: If “AUB Makes Men”, What Are the Women Supposed to Be? Women began taking nursing classes at the beginning of the 20th century; they could enroll in the junior and senior years as of the 1920s; and they became full members of the AUB campus community in 1952. However, the modus operandi of SPC/AUB always had a masculine veneer. Phrases such as “men of character”, “men of culture and efficiency”, and “men of knowledge” permeated the speeches and writings of the leaders of the school even after women began attending in substantial numbers. In the rare moments when women were mentioned, they were not the primary actors. The Americans either said they had a duty to protect the women from the Arab men oppressing them, or they said that they must teach Arab men to treat women as American men had come to do. As Bayard Dodge, president from 1923 to 1948 said, “we can aid orientals to understand the West, by giving them a wholesome attitude toward an emancipated womanhood and proper relations between the sexes.” In this framework, only if Arab men reformed their character would madam liberty reign in the Arab world; only manly men could truly uplift their societies by allowing women to follow along their path toward freedom.

My paper will analyze the contradictory elements underpinning the slogan of “AUB Makes Men” and then use presidents’ speeches, faculty minutes, school newspapers, and interviews with women graduates to show the complexities of women’s lives on campus. Much of their story parallels the move to coeducation in the United States, with increasing access to new majors and student political positions, but with social obstacles making it hard for women to gain full equality. The women also had to contend with issues arising from their own Arab communities at home. Some events on campus, such as the many political demonstrations, left little room for women’s participation. Still others, like the many beauty contests, extolled a woman’s looks over and above her intellectual abilities. A study of women at AUB serves as a nexus point for examining American and Arab perceptions of gender, education, and imperialism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines the desire and willingness of girls to enroll in a single-sex math class for one year (9th grade) of their public school math education. Individuals create and develop self-efficacy beliefs as a result of the verbal persuasions they receive from others. Negative peer messages about the single-sex math class discouraged girls from choosing to enroll. Messages about femininity and heteronormativity reinforced girls’ actions with threats of negative labeling for non-compliance. In labeling the single-sex math class as lesbian math, boys reinforced the heteronormativity of the adolescent peer culture and threatened girls with the ultimate gender stigma of sexual deviance. The desire to present a self-meaning consistent with the presented self caused many girls to give up choices that reflected their interest, to instead fit in with the designations of cultural popularity.